


Entropy

by Plenoptic



Series: Otherwise [2]
Category: Transformers
Genre: F/M, ye olde bonding through trauma trope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 03:33:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12762264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Plenoptic/pseuds/Plenoptic
Summary: A battle plan gone awry gives Optimus and Elita a push.





	Entropy

It’s not often that Optimus Prime and Elita One take to the battlefield together—simply bad tactics. Were something to happen to them both, the Autobot resistance would be dealt a blow from which it may not recover. Given their way, Elita is quite sure that Autobot high command would see her in a gilded cage in Iacon—in the event that Optimus falls, she seems the most likely candidate for the Matrix, and they have little chance of keeping Optimus off the field. She has a reputation for being slightly more reasonable. 

Even so, she can’t let her troops walk onto the field without her, any more than Optimus can. So they are both in Tarn that fateful orn, and by some stroke of luck—whether good or ill—after joors of weaving through the broken ruins of the city, trying to flush out guerilla squadrons of Decepticons, she and Optimus rendezvous quite by accident in the same dilapidated husk of a transport hub.

It’s the first time all orn she’s had a moment to rest, and Elita indulges. She and Optimus sit side by side behind an overturned transport shuttle, sharing what rations they have between them, listening to the intermixed and confusing comm feed from the field.

“Ironhide and Chromia are agitating a Seeker swarm to the north,” Optimus reports over private channel. The hub seems empty, but neither dares to speak out loud. “Two, maybe.”

“Springer and his squad are nearly finished with the fourth quadrant to the west.” Elita mutes several channels and opens another, listening intently. “Something’s happened. Medical evac teams are scattered all over the city. We need to be careful. Maybe we ought to meet up with another squad.”

Optimus’s optics narrow. “Bumblebee reported a Seeker trine headed for one of the nearby ground cannons. I cannot allow them to activate it. Whether they turn it upon us or upon the civilians who have yet to evacuate, the losses would be incalculable.”

Elita sighs, lets her helm rest back against the shuttle with a soft thud. “Alright. How do we find them?”

He swipes open his wrist port and offers her his arm. She releases an interface cable and plugs in, and a holographic map flickers to life on the ground between them. Optimus adds to the data packet, rendering the city in three-dimensions, marking squad locations as data continues to filter in through the comm channels.

“Here.” A tall building a few kliks due south of their hiding spot is highlighted in yellow. “This is the location of the nearest ground cannon.”

“The nearest?”

“Tarn has thirteen.”

Elita swears through their private channel. “Where are the others?”

Twelve others light up in red, scattered all across the massive city. They sit in silence for a moment, surveying the terrain.

“This one here, to the near east,” Elita says at length, indicating the cannon with a finger. “It has a less obstructed view of the city. If I wanted to use a ground cannon to my advantage, that’s the one I’d go for.”

“The other is closer to the trine’s last reported location. We’ve been here for joors. I’d want to see this conflict ended as quickly as possible. Minimize losses.”

They share a long look. The obvious answer is to split up; either of them alone is likely more than capable of handling a single Seeker trine. But that’s assuming that nothing else impedes them along the way. Intel on both areas is spotty at best, and Decepticons are known for their brutal guerilla tactics. Urban warfare is their domain.

Optimus inclines his head and opens another channel between them. He pings Prowl. For several long, excruciating moments, they’re left with silence—and then static crackles over the link, and Prowl’s voice comes across crisp and clear, raised over the sound of gunfire.

“Prowl here. Over.”

“This is Prime and Elita One. I need to know which Decepticon officer is most likely in charge of this assault. Over.”

Prowl’s reply is nearly drowned out by falling shells. “It’s a bit—to tell!—chaos out here!—ver.”

“Best guess, Prowl,” Elita cuts in. Optimus arches an optic ridge at her, and she hastily adds, “Over.”

“Best guess—Starscream. Lots of Seekers, for starters. Flashy choice given the urban environment and high-rise buildings. Visibility is low, so the choice demonstrates a great deal of confidence in their abilities. Furthermore—”

“Thank you, Prowl, that will be all. Over and out.” Optimus switches them back to private link, turning back to the map. “If it’s Starscream, your cannon is the better bet. He’s the type to sacrifice a time advantage for a showier tactic.”

“You’re sure Prowl is right?”

 “His guess is far better than mine.”

 “We could always split up,” she says, more than a little reluctantly. “Cover our bases.”

 Another shared look—and then they both unplug, pick up their guns, and troop out of the transport hub together.

 They have four kliks to cover in an indeterminate amount of time. Vehicle modes are risky—too loud. In any event, there’s been too much damage to the main roads; wheels might not save them much time. They head off on foot, nav point set for the tower Elita highlighted. Optimus takes point, rifle up, while Elita covers their flanks. They’ll just have to move quickly enough to outstrip anyone coming up at their rear—or hope that the enemy’s first shot misses.

 Elita casts a look off the side of the road and shivers. They’ve taken one of the long, arcing roads that stretches above the terranian parts of the city; most of the buildings are below their feet, only the tallest towers still reaching above their heads.

 “Don’t look down,” Optimus says lowly, voice tinged with amusement. Elita glares at him, but his back’s already turned.

 Their progress is halted two kliks from their target. A pile up of no less than ten transport shuttles obstructs the road entirely. Optimus slings his rifle over his back and hauls himself up onto the side of an overturned shuttle with grace his massive form shouldn’t allow, then leans down and offers Elita a hand.

 “Going up.”

 She snorts and places her hand in his. He hauls her up, and she tries—desperately—not to be too affected by how close he draws her before setting her down on her own two feet. The warmth radiating from his frame is almost too tempting—it would be too easy to sink into him, be enveloped by him.

 “Thanks. This war’s not too kind to the vertically challenged.”

 He straightens, and winces when his antennae make jarring contact with the field that encloses the road. “Ouch. Nor to the vertically privileged.”

 “I keep telling you to watch for low ceilings,” she says, amused. He arches an optic ridge down at her.

 “You’re funny.”

 “Aren’t I, though?” She hip checks him lightly and hops down on the other side of the transport. He follows suit with a great deal less grace, and she chuckles at the thunderous _thud_ he makes when he lands on the road.

 The brevity is short lived; no sooner have they turned to take the rest of the road than something _pings_ on her proximity sensor. She swivels, almost in time with Optimus, and they both peer through a gap between overturned transports to scan the road behind them. Empty.

 Elita realizes— _above_ —a nanosecond too late. The road rocks, and a moment later the concussion blast hits them. It’s enough to make Optimus teeter; Elita, on the other hand, is knocked flat on her face with a muffled “ _oomph._ ” In other circumstances, it might have been comedic, but under the concussive barrage, the field enclosing the road overhead flickers, sputters, and dies.

 Optimus plucks her upright, his rifle out and trained skyward. Elita hears them before she sees them—a Seeker trine, bearing down on them low and fast. A barrage of laser fire rains down, peppering the surface of the road, and Elita grunts when she finds herself pulled sharply down to the ground. But the trine doesn’t pause to harass them further, screaming overhead and racing for the horizon.

 She ought to be relieved—they’d have been virtually defenseless against three armed Seekers with the field out—but Elita’s combat protocols don’t shut down. Something prickles along the edges of her field. Elita peers up at Optimus and finds him scanning the skyline, optics narrow and bright.

 It hits them both at the same time—there was only one Seeker trine reported in the area—they were supposedly headed for the target tower—and that trine just headed down the way Optimus and Elita had come. Which means that they were wrong—the other tower had been the trine’s target, and if they were departing, then—

 A low rumble sounds, followed by a reedy, mechanical whir. Elita’s pump stutters. She whirls around, searching—there, to their left, the other tower, green light racing up its sides, its domed top transforming and opening, revealing an immense turret beneath. It’s trained in their direction, powering up.

 “Optimus—”

 He grabs her, pinning her to his chest, and takes them both to the ground. The cannon fires, and the road explodes around them, lanced open by green light so bright that Elita can’t even see the aftermath. There is only the noise, shattering noise, the metal beneath her turning hot and warping violently, Optimus’s grip on her tightening, the sudden jarring sensation of the road simply opening up beneath them—

 And then the falling, falling, for how long, she can’t tell.

 

* * *

 

 It’s dark. Warm. Almost comfortable—she could be in her own berth. Better yet—the oil bath in Optimus’s quarters, one of the few luxuries he grudgingly allowed, only because Elita threatened to never speak to him again if he didn’t let Ratchet install it. It’s practical—huge bot that he is, regular oil immersion helps upkeep the joints that medics don’t always get to—and more importantly, once she stole his room codes, Elita was able to take advantage of it for a little much-needed alone time. She really ought to stop just showing up in his quarters unannounced. But, to be fair, if he doesn’t want her to, he could just change his room codes, and he hasn’t.

 The last few joors hit her in a rush. She jerks—and the pain that flashes through her is so sudden and intense that it wrenches a gasp from her mouthplates. She curls into herself and lies still, letting it run its course, pain sensors singing. Something is very wrong. She runs a diagnostic and groans—crush damage. Everywhere. Frag it all. She tests her limbs. Painful, certainly, but mostly functional. Her left knee joint cracks loudly in the silence.

 She sweeps a hand out, trying to discern her surroundings. She feels rubble around her—jagged pieces of shattered road, internal support struts, badly twisted armor plates.

 “Optimus,” she says, and her vocalizer glitches. She coughs and tries again, to no avail. The silence around her is total and enclosing.

 The panic hasn’t hit her yet—good. Best to use the shock to her advantage. She opens her subspace with difficulty and retrieves one of Wheeljack’s more useful (and safer) inventions—a disc that harvests particulate energon to produce light. It was originally meant to be a model for a device of a much larger scale, before it became apparent that the radiation it would have produced far exceeded safety levels. By some twist of good fortune, Elita picked it up from him only a few orns ago, mostly to humor him, promising to find a good use for it. She’d have preferred different circumstances.

 She drops the little disc to the ground. For several agonizing moments, there’s nothing, just the dark—but then she detects a faint glow. She counts the beats of her pump to distract herself while the disc’s light slowly intensifies and her optics adjust. She can’t fathom just how much wreckage she must be under, for no light to permeate. Two massive support struts have caught one another at an angle, creating a tiny cave, saving her from being crushed entirely. There’s not nearly enough room to stand, but she’s not dead. So there’s that.

 The disc reaches its optimum brightness, illuminating the space around her, and Elita’s spark seizes.

 Optimus lies but a few feet away, his massive frame unmoving. The panic hits her then, sudden, overwhelming. Ignoring the pain sensors urgently pinging her CPU, Elita crawls forward, scraping her armor over debris, wrenching her foot and ankle out from beneath a heavy chunk of crude building material, definitely leaving some bits behind.

“Optimus,” she says raggedly, her voice catching. He doesn’t respond. There’s a crack running along the side of his helm, exposing the delicate, precious circuitry beneath—and more unsettling still, a wicked-looking piece of rebar, almost the length of her hand and thickness of her fist, jutting from the lower ridge of his chest armor, impaling him and pinning him to the ground. She tries to run a scan, fails—her systems are jarred too badly to assess even her damage, let alone his. At a loss, she reaches for him and seizes his antennae and pulls, hard. He grunts, his helm rocking, and she nearly sobs in relief.

 Snarling in pain, she hauls herself up against him, propping herself up on his chest and pausing to cycle air into her heated chassis. His optics are dark. She takes his helm in her hands and eases it to the side, off of the grotesque injury. Shakily, she opens her wrist port and withdraws an interface cable, cupping the back of his head and running her fingers down the uppermost arch of his spinal strut. She finds his medical interface port and plugs in with a murmured apology she’s sure he can’t hear. She dives in.

She and Optimus have performed systems interfaces before, obviously—less than a joor ago, for instance. It’s nearly always to share data, swap battle plans and protocols. It’s safe, fast—occasionally, they use it to work around the usual chain of command. Then there are times where words simply fail them—after a battle, when the shock and grief are too much to give words to, when their fields are too chaotic for either to tell what the other is feeling. It helps, sometimes, to quietly plug into one another and sit with the shared trauma, processing together what they couldn’t possible handle individually. Elita cherishes those moments more than she cares to admit, even to herself, even knowing the great pain from which those moments are born. They are moments when she is nearly as close to Optimus as any bot has ever been, and she’s rather past pretending that that doesn’t mean something to her.

Optimus’s systems are dark and quiet now. It’s a mark of his trust in her that she doesn’t set off any internal alarms—he’s long since logged her as a natural part of his own system. It’s almost standard now between comrades in arms, she argues to herself. Special ops partners do it all the time. And she’s probably the closest thing Optimus Prime has to a partner, an equal. She threads her way easily through his firewalls—shudders to think that, if the Decepticons were to take her and somehow crack into her CPU, they’d have everything they’d need to hack Optimus Prime, everything they could ever possibly want to know about the Autobots’ forces—and skims his diagnostic systems. Several urgent alerts pop up, sounding sirens in her head, and she groans.

She’s unsurprised to find that his energon levels are the first of the critical alerts. She can give him a transfusion from her own systems, but it won’t do either of them any good if she can’t patch at least the worst of his leaks. She pings his energon circulation systems. His primary line is miraculously intact; had the rebar hit a little to the right, it would have severed his spinal strut and the line along with it. It’s a lateral line that’s been lacerated.

Swearing to herself, she opens her subspace and dumps out her field kit, grabs the tiny welder designed for emergency repairs. She squints up at the roof of their little cave. The rebar impaling Optimus is free-standing; she can probably cut a great deal of it free, give herself better access to his injuries. His diagnostics ping her another critical warning.

“Shut up already,” she mutters, and hoists her leg up with a grunt, pulling her energon dagger free of the sheath she keeps secured around her ankle. Cutting through the rebar is quick but tedious work; she saws at it as close to Optimus’s frame as she dares, keeping a close watch on his rapidly falling energon levels.

She finally saws through and pushes the chunk of rebar away, panting, skimming the edges of the wound with her fingertips. The rebar’s angle is pulling the Prime’s armor from his protoform, holding him open, exposing the delicate systems beneath. Bright blue energon pools beneath her searching fingers when she shudderingly nudges aside a bit of viscera she can’t identify.

“Got you,” she snarls, and angles the little welder hurriedly into the bleeding cavity. She lacks Ratchet’s precision and training, but knows enough to only cauterize where she’s more or less sure the leak is. She pulls medical mesh from her field kit and stuffs it into the open wound; hopefully the mesh’s nanites will activate and seal whatever leaks she’s missed. She watches his vital signs breathlessly, counting the nanoseconds, and releases a long sigh when his diagnostics report the leak closed.

“See?” she murmurs, patting Optimus’s cheekplate. “I’ve got you, big guy. No problem.”

And at that moment, she gets two additional critical warnings. Spark case fracture; spark case pressure critical.

“Frag. Okay. Some problems.”

Sitting up shakily, she scans his chestplates. The left side is crushed badly. She dives back into his medical overrides and tries to open them, with no response but a dull, pathetic whirring from his chassis. Swearing, she wedges a hand into the gap between his chestplates and pulls. Nothing.

“I’m sorry about this, alright?” She jams both hands into the gap, braces her feet against the (mostly) uninjured side of his chest, and pulls until she feels her damaged shoulder cables strain and creak. After several long moments, the manual release catches, and his chestplates abruptly transform backwards with a swift _clang_ , sending her toppling backward.

She lies still for a moment, watching the critical pressure alerts fade, staring at the ceiling of their prison. It’s bright. Why is it suddenly so bright? Her processor catches up, and she shivers. Optimus’s spark is exposed. She’s never seen it before—the most intimate and incredible part of a Cybertronian’s existence. Of _his_ existence. All that Optimus Prime is, beneath the armor and cables and wires, lies open before her. 

She’s never seen it. She supposes no one has, save for Ratchet and whichever bots have been lucky enough to be intimate with the Prime. She’s never asked Optimus whether he’s shared his spark with lovers in the past. Megatron has seen it—that much is certain. She knows that Optimus carries with him a tiny fragment of the warlord’s mad spark, borne of the vorns they spent together as Prime and High Protectorate before Megatron betrayed them all. Elita has long suspected that they might have been lovers, that perhaps they were considering forging a permanent sparkbond. Everyone _suspected_ , at least. It made for good gossip, wondering about the intimate life of the Prime and those in his inner circle. But Elita was one of the few bots who knew both of them well, who was trusted by both, and she saw the way they looked at one another from the very start, from the moment Orion Pax woke as Optimus Prime with the weight of the Matrix in his chest and Megatron leaning over him, cradling him, pledging to protect him from harm until their sparks extinguished. The High Protectorate’s oath to the Prime is sacred, second only to the covenant between the Prime and the Matrix itself.

Elita sits up, slowly. Optimus’s spark—the one Megatron had broken—shines impossibly bright, blue-white in the dark. Energy arcs along its surface like lightning, the ragged corona flickering and shuddering around the opaquer core. Her own spark tightens, aches. Thoughts of his spark often flicker, unbidden, into her mind in the endless few moments before recharge—what it might look like. Feel like. It’s the last thing she wonders right before that tormenting thought grips her— _I want him_ —and then she usually forces herself into recharge. 

Some kind of structure encircles the lower half of Optimus’s spark, cradling it—the Matrix, she realizes with a jolt. It looks almost delicate; it projects a vapor-like blue field that encloses the Prime’s spark, shielding it. Which is fortunate, because his sparkcase, the mutli-faceted crystalline structure that houses his spark, is fractured along several planes, a few shards missing.

Elita crouches as close to him as she dares. She’s seen Ratchet place containment fields around sparks before—they decay quickly but usually give medics enough time to stabilize fractured sparkcases. Elita hasn’t the slightest clue how to generate one, and doesn’t think she has the equipment to do so even if she knew.

There’s a pulse along the systems interface—something distinctly _not_ Optimus. A shiver crawls down Elita’s spinal strut. She’s been around Optimus long enough to recognize the Matrix, how it feels when the ancient relic reaches into their world. The critical energon level warning pings again. 

“I know already,” she mutters, and pulls the transfer line from her field kit. “Don’t get your tailpipe in a twist.” Back-talking the link between Primus and the Prime is possibly not her best tactical decision. She’s too tired to think better of it. “Just keep his spark stable for me.” 

Another pulse along their link. Acquiescence, almost. Reassurance, perhaps. She can’t quite tell what’s Matrix and what’s Optimus; his systems are humming, base protocols waking back up now that the worst leak has been patched. She brushes her knuckles very briefly along his cheekplate, just enough to make that ache in her spark graduate from uncomfortable to painful, before slipping the transfer needle into her own brachial energon line. She sticks the other end beneath the heavy armor of Optimus’s shoulder, hitting where his brachial line merges with the carotid.

As a precaution, she runs a swath of medical mesh along the gaping wound in his helm, holding it in place until the nanites activate and began to knit to his plating. Better that than leave the innermost workings of his CPU at the mercy of the elements. The worst of the critical alerts held at bay, Elita is suddenly too weary to remain upright. She gets herself horizontal, curling into Optimus’s side, watching bright blue energon seep from her lines into his. It is, undoubtedly, the closest they’ve ever been—plugged in, lines shared, bodies touching. She wonders how long the Matrix can maintain his spark with his casing so badly damaged, wonders why their tiny prison is so warm, and then her subroutines take over and recharge steals over her.

 

* * *

 

She awakens to a barrage of critical alerts from Optimus’s systems. The mech’s body shudders and creaks, jolting her to awareness, and a low, keening groan of pain escapes his mouthplates. Elita surges back into their systems interface, pulling up the diagnostic. She’s been out for _joors_. The ceiling of the cave has collapsed substantially.

She sits up, pausing to let her systems adjust their equilibrium—the transfusion line is taking its toll—and blinks down into Optimus’s open chest. The Matrix’s field is wavering; his spark case is beginning to decay. Without its delicate matrix intact, it can’t sustain itself. His spark flares and dims, flares and dims, distressed.

Elita is suddenly aware—hyper aware, painfully aware—that they may die here. Optimus first, then her. There’s no telling how deeply they’re buried, whether anyone has realized where they are, whether anyone can get to them, and if they can, how long it may take to clear the rubble. And Optimus’s spark is collapsing.

“Elita.”

Her helm jerks up. Optimus—optics online, that blue, deep blue—is watching her, faceplates a grimacing mask of pain, frame shuddering beneath her. She trembles and leans down into him, pressing her helm to his, venting a hard gasp and taking his face between her hands.

“I’m sorry,” she says brokenly. “I’m so sorry. You were right about the other ground cannon. I should have trusted your instincts, I—”

“Shh,” Optimus murmurs. He sounds more tired than she’s ever heard him. “Shh. We chose together.” His hand lifts, covers hers. His thumb strokes over her battered wrist. She doesn’t mind the pain. “How bad?” 

“Bad,” she chokes out. She nudges him toward his diagnostic systems, helping him navigate his own CPU and subroutines. The damage to his helm is worse than she thought; it’s left him blurry, confused. He relies on her to make sense of the frantic flurry of data, and groans softly. 

“Ah. Bad.” 

“I don’t know what to do. I don’t—” She pauses. “Wait—I could—a medical merge—”

His helm jerks, a sharp negative. “I can’t ask you to…”

“I don’t care,” she says fiercely. She overrides the lock on her chestplates, lets the interior chamber depressurize with a hiss.

Optimus’s hand tightens on hers. “Please. No. This isn’t—how I wanted to see your spark. For the first time.”

Elita stills. Slowly—cautiously—she presses closer to the Prime, brushes her mouthplates along the side of his face. He’s soft, somehow, through their systems interface. There’s something aching in him, as well. She smiles a little bitterly, shuttering her optics for a moment.

“This always—goes better in—my head,” he says lowly, struggling to fit words together. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have waited—so long.”

She opens her chestplates, baring her spark, and tips his chin up with gentle fingertips. “Look at me, Optimus. It’s alright. But if we’re to have a chance of making up lost time, you have to let me.” 

His frame shudders. The feedback from his diagnostic systems is becoming more urgent with each passing nanosecond; his sensor nets are nearly overwhelmed. She can’t imagine the pain; even the echoes of it along their link make her shiver. Optimus’s exposed spark flares, and he nods, groaning between gritted denta. Elita doesn’t hesitate—she presses herself into him, holding him close, and lets their sparks connect.

It’s not a complete merge—and with both of their systems on critical and all medical subroutines active, bodies flooded with emergency reserves of repair nanites, there’s little chance they’ll get an iota of pleasure from the experience. The Matrix retreats, letting Elita’s spark close to the Prime’s, letting her stabilize him. She’s heard theories that Cybertronians may have once been multi-consciousness beings, perhaps even living with some kind of hive-mind, many sparks connected; there’s no scientific credence to the theory, save for the reliable success rate of medical spark merges. Something about crisis is known to change the nature of the merge itself, allow one spark to support another.

It’s as deep and penetrating as a real merge, though, and every bit as intimate. All of Optimus is suddenly laid bare before her; all of his turbulence, his sorrow, his fierce pride in his soldiers, his deep, abiding love—for them, for Cybertron, for the strange worlds he’s visited and the beings he’s encountered. For her. She tries to hover outside of him, tries not to cross lines she ought not cross—struggles to remember where they are, their dire situation—but Optimus’s interiority is quiet, and warm, and she loves it. Loves him.

Wonder overcomes her—not hers. His. _Shock_ , even, that she could possibly feel the same. Elita smiles into his shoulder armor, squeezes him gently.

_Of course I do, you fool. How could I not love you?_

She realizes, a moment too late, that between their systems interface and the merge, he’s privy to every thought in her head, but the worry is short lived—there’s too much relief flooding her systems, hers and his. Optimus’s hands tighten on her frame.

 

* * *

 

She floats back. It’s slow, and painful. There’s a blurry shape hovering over her, voices—far too many. Someone slips into her systems. Medical overrides leap over her firewalls. It’s bright, so bright. 

“Easy,” someone says, from far away, very far away. There’s a sharp pain in her arm. “Easy, ‘Lita, we’ve got you. Red, let’s close her up. On three, drop the containment field. One—two—three—”

Pain sears up her front. Her spark feels raw somehow, weak. She can feel—something. Someone. Just an echo. Something warm.

_Optimus?_

“She’s stable. Elita, can you hear me? You’re safe. We’re getting you a med evac back to Iacon. You’re going to be fine. Red, get her into stasis and onto that evac the astrosecond it touches down. I’m going to check on Prime.”

“Yessir.”

He reaches back for her. It’s not enough. A medical merge isn’t nearly enough to create a lasting bond—within joors, the link between their sparks will fade.

_We’ll just have to make it again._

_Is that a promise?_

“Alright, Commander. Just a quick recharge, and you’ll be back home. Rest easy.”

“I’m alive,” she mumbles. Red Alert smiles down at her, giving her shoulder a squeeze.

“That you are. Good job. I can’t believe you managed to keep Prime alive with you that whole time. Maybe you should have been in medical, hm?”

“Where is he?”

“Loaded up.” Ironhide’s rugged visage comes into view over her head, a rough grin on his faceplates. “Hey there, Commander. Come on—let’s get you home, eh?” 

She is lifted—carried—and then there’s an evac bunk beneath her aching frame. She tilts her helm, struggles to focus on the blurry form in the bunk beside her. Ratchet is leaning over the Prime, nearly obscuring him from view, but she can tell from the angle of his antennae that Optimus is turned toward her. She reaches for him along their tenuous link—it’s fading fast. It’ll be gone before they reach Iacon.

Red Alert injects something into her brachial line, and warmth washes over her at once. She feels a moment of panic—she wants to stay awake, hold onto their connection as long as possible—but Optimus is already heavily sedated, fading fast. There’s a long medical leave in store for both of them, no doubt.

Right before she goes under, he reaches for her, one last time. It’s a warm, soft burst, inarticulate in its joy. His body has never taken more severe punishment, and he’s the happiest he’s ever been. In the moments before she drifts off, a message blinks in the corner of her vision:

 _Do you have plans tomorrow night?_  

 

 


End file.
